[tristanc]

I feel like this comes up again and again. For some people Instagram or Facebook are sometimes the only way to communicate with new peers without introducing too much friction. In France, for example, most of my friends will exclusively use Instagram when connecting with new people.

[milkytron]

Are there no other options? Do your friends use them exclusively because they are sticky? Is there actually a feature that makes them unable to use other apps?

I find a lot of times, people just don't want to change, regardless of whether they should. I was the first to delete my Facebook in my group of friends, and now they all have, and my family has mostly jumped ship as well.

I'm sure your friends can use something else, they just choose not to.

[wsinks]

Right, they choose not to invest more time and thought into something else. That's why the pattern of the social media bait and switch is frustrating.

The company made a promise. People bought that promise.

Company changes the promise and puts a bow on it and dresses it up. Company only notes the promise in the fine print. But because it already has the power and because people don't want to be on alert 100% of the time (because that can actually kill you), the deception works.

So you bring up a fallacy. The actual option here is "pay attention to every company you use to communicate all the time" or don't pay attention and accidentally agree to something not well advertised.

Interesting fact, Facebook has an F rating on the BBB's website.

Of course, the very first complaint on there is an interesting one that completely misconstrues the first amendment right, but again, that's just interesting.

(https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/menlo-park/profile/social-media-ma...)

[spicybright]

Of course they can use something else. The very vast majority just want to talk to each other, not spend energy moving as many people as they can to their preferred platform to do the same thing.

[croes]

Some companies and governments only communicate through social media.

[throwawayboise]

How about face-to-face? That's how we used to do it before we all carried phones.